Flickr

06 August 2008

Interview: AMERICAblog.com's John Aravosis

I wrote an article, running today on AfterElton.com, on the right's use of anti-gay attacks as a wedge issue in the 2008 election. I spoke with AMERICABlog.com's John Aravosis, and this is the transcript of that interview. It's long, even though I didn't include the part about Battlestar Galactica, so I've put it behind a jump.

Christie Keith: Do you think that gay issues, including the marriage issue in California or just in general, are going to be the wedge issue in 2008 that they’ve been in the past?

John Aravosis: No. Well, no, not at the national level versus the local level.

I think specific races they’re going to try to make it a deal or in swing states, where they think they can get a push out of it. Even in 2004 it was kind of strange in that the national Republicans – well, it’s funny. Bush was pushing on the gay marriage thing initially, and then the national Republicans backed off a little bit, and it started being local.

Like we saw that one flier that was in – oh God, it was in a couple states; maybe like Kentucky. Yeah, probably Kentucky. It always is. With the Obama stuff, too.

But it might have been Kentucky where it showed the gay couple holding hands and then a Bible with an X through it or something like that. But they did it in a local state. They didn’t do it at the national level.

So even though they were gay baiting nationally, they backed off a little as the election approached. And remember even the week before? The week before the election, which nobody remembers because none of our groups apparently thought it was a big deal.

Bush ended up kind of, sort of, supporting civil unions the week before the election and nobody wanted to touch it because they didn’t want to, well, give Bush credit. Okay; fair enough, but now they’ve still forgotten it. That was a great wedge for us to throw back. Bush said he didn’t care if we got civil unions.

So I think this year's getting interesting because McCain’s already showing he’s not sure what to do. Look, if he doesn’t care about the issues – the good news is he doesn’t care. The bad news is, he doesn’t care.

We get hurt a lot by Republicans who don’t care. So the vote against us is a freebie because they don’t care. I think the Log Cabin Republicans, the gay Republicans, like to argue, “No, no, but he just doesn’t really care.”

They don’t realize that that generally means they’re willing to trade away our vote ‘cause some senator comes up and says, “Hey, would you vote for my anti-gay thing?”

He goes, “Sure. Would you vote for my highway project?”

“Okay; because I don’t care about the gay thing either way.”

We’re seeing that with McCain now. He doesn’t really care about the gay stuff, so it means that when the religious right screams because he meets with the gay Republicans, he meets with the religious right, too, and then promises to be more anti-gay in public, which is what he did.

Christie Keith: So he says he was against DOMA because he supports states rights, does that just mean he’s willing to go to every individual state and fight for it that way? Because he’s come out in favor of this amendment here in California. He fought for an amendment in Arizona, which granted is his own state, but it’s just so much hypocrisy and like you say, he doesn’t care.

John Aravosis: What you’re seeing is he was always playing a cute game with regards to DOMA and the federal marriage amendment being a Constitutional amendment.

Christie Keith: Right.

John Aravosis: He never really opposed it. And I’m not surprised that at the state level he’s gone anti-gay because again he used the legal argument against DOMA. He didn’t use the moral argument against it, against the federal marriage amendment. He didn’t use the moral argument. So he wasn’t opposed to it. He just thought it wasn’t necessary.

Christie Keith: I was watching MSNBC about two weeks ago and they had a campaign spokesperson for McCain. She was being asked about Obama’s appeal to evangelicals and the religious people in general, and how weak McCain is in that area.

She delivered her little sound byte and it was basically something along the lines of, I think that if religious voters really look at the values, issues and they go down the list they will see that McCain is with them on gay marriage, abortion, blah, blah, family values.

She specifically used the phrase 'gay marriage,' kept restating that over and over basically laying down the gauntlet and saying yeah, maybe Obama goes to church every Sunday and he’s a really religious guy, but he’s Satan. And maybe McCain never goes to church and calls his wife a C-U-N-T in public, but he will vote against the gays.

That’s how I thought we'd see this used as a wedge this time around, that's the kind of thing I thought we'd see playing out. I don’t see it as being as big as it was in 2000, when it seemed like every time you turned on the TV, it was there.

John Aravosis: That’s because society has changed since 2000. We’ve gone from Will & Grace being historic to Will & Grace being reruns. I’m serious. This is eight years later. You can’t do the same anti-gay stuff you did eight years ago. You just can’t.

So it's got to be it is a finer dance. Look at the talk about Sam Nunn as a possible VP. How Sam himself had to come out and say, Well, maybe we ought to reconsider Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Not saying we repeal this, but why don’t we think about it. Well, it was weasely, what he said. The only thing is what was very interesting was for a Democrat to be vice presidential candidate, to be considered a vice presidential candidate, you now have to be good on don’t ask/don’t tell.

Now granted it took 15 years for that shift to occur, but I mean that’s still pretty significant. You’re working in a different environment where it’s less okay now to be anti-gay. That doesn’t mean they won’t be anti-gay. It just means they have to be more careful. So you’re seeing McCain play to both sides.

What worries me is typically, and I would say Republicans especially, but also Democrats, the ones who feel the need to play both sides usually screw us in the end. When they waffle on gay issues they’re usually bad in the end. They don’t just waffle and then fall our way when push comes to shove. They don’t.

So again this is where you come back to the concept of how wedded – no pun intended – is McCain to our issues. He’s not. So it means he’s going to go for the cheap vote. You know what? There’s a lot more evangelicals than there are gay Republicans.

Well, that’s what it really comes down to. Twenty-five percent of gays vote Republican more or less in the polls we have.

John Aravosis: Actually and evangelicals could be – I forget the number – it could be a quarter of the Republican Party. I think that’s a lot more than we’ve got.

So, yeah, in the end he could just do the math. And the -- I’m sorry, but it’s actually more complicated. And the gay issue also plays to the middle, to the moderates which both Dems and Republicans need.

So it’s kind of like the Black issue with Republicans. I’ve always heard an analysis here in town that Republicans don’t usually play up to the Black electorate before the election because they’re thinking of getting Black votes. They’re thinking of getting White suburban votes. White suburbanites don’t want to think that they’re voting for people who are racists or who are intolerant.

So typically when you see the Republican Party make a move to kiss up to the Black vote it’s because they know they’re not going to get it and they don’t care, but they want to convince moderate White people that they’re not racist –

Christie Keith: Right; the big tent.

John Aravosis: -- that too. They need to be a little more tolerant on gay issues so that moderates go, okay, our party isn’t as wacky after all.

Christie Keith: Do you see this being something that gets used either on the national level or in key electoral states with regards to advertising, either by – I can’t really see it being done by the candidates directly, but by the 527s or even by the Republican Party, advertising that includes this issue?

John Aravosis: Sure; it’ll be the same states that run all the racist Obama ads. Same states. Big surprise on that one.

Christie Keith: I’m asking you to look in your crystal ball. What use do you think it might be made of it this election? You’ve already said you think it’s going to be less and maybe has to be a little more subtle or refined.

John Aravosis: Take California. California is not the nation. You don’t have the Republican National Party talking about gay marriage every day. You have people agitating in California. Whether the California press covers it, national press doesn’t cover gay marriage.

It was that one week – the day the Gore decision came out and the day you had the marriages, the national media covered it. The rest of the time the national media didn’t pay any attention.

I actually went on CNN to talk about it because Howie Kurtz, who’s the media critic, was saying that the media was ignoring the story nationally. I was like, yeah, they are because it’s kind of an old story at this point.

But that goes to my point. It’s not covered nationally. It’s covered in the state. But maybe it is controversial; maybe it’s not. I don’t know. You know better than I.

Also the people that are agitating in your state, I don’t know how much they’re thinking of the national election. I think they’re thinking of gay marriage. Lou Sheldon’s ticked off ‘cause he wants to stop gay marriage in the fall.

So we’ll see. The local parties will use it in certain places. McCain doesn’t know what to do, so he backs off the gay stuff. Now he’s back on the gay stuff. He’s going to back off again. The religious right's going to get ticked and say, you promised to be more vocally anti-gay, and he’s going to go, oh, you’re right, you’re right.

So he’ll mention some things, but he’ll try to say it in a way that isn’t too nasty because he doesn’t want to tick off the moderates. The gay Republicans will vote for him anyway ‘cause that’s what they like to do. They’re always looking for some reason to reinforce their issues. Meaning their problems.

They’ll find some reason to justify voting for McCain. It’s all he needs. But they’re just not a big enough number for him to care. He’s thinking about the moderates. As long as he can be wishy-washy enough, the moderates will go okay.

I don’t know. It’s a tough call because I think it’s just also just the religious right in general. They’re a factor. They’re a factor locally, but nationally?

Christie Keith: I’m curious about the way this gets played out in the media. Things like code phrases, like San Francisco values or Nancy Pelosi style politics or whatever –

John Aravosis: The point isn’t whether it’s going to come up. The point is how much is it going to come up versus last time versus eight years ago.

Frankly, even with the Obama stuff, they’re not sure how to touch the racial issue because one shouldn’t. It’s more they’re afraid that their surrogates are going to touch the racial issue. They’re very worried about the appearance of intolerance and I think the gay thing will play into that, but again, never underestimate their ability to play things very covertly. They just don’t want it on the national scene. They don't want it on the national screen. They want it locally and they want it in a way where the right bigoted audience sees the message, but nobody else does. So it doesn’t get them in trouble with the moderates.

So it may be hard to follow because I think it’s going to be more covert this year than ever. People are getting married in California and most of the country’s going eh, whatever. That makes it kind of hard to play it.

We’ll see. They may get desperate in the final weeks, and they may try it ‘cause part of it’s a mathematical calculus. McCain’s still ten points down or five points down a week before the election and his people say, you know what? Forget the middle. If we can get our base to turn out two points more or two percent more of our base to turn out we can win, then they may go super anti-gay to get the base to turn out. They would in a minute, I think.

So it’s still calculus, which again, this is the danger of a candidate who doesn’t care about your issues really. He’s not for you or against you. He’s going to flip a coin or roll the dice and that’s how he’s going to be towards you that day.

At least Obama will have serious qualms about going anti-gay. I don’t think Obama would ever go anti-gay; he would have serious moral issues in his heart and his soul about going anti-gay.

McCain? I think he’s going to roll a dice and flip a coin and say okay.